


this is a land of promise

by Ler



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/M, M/M, Multi, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ler/pseuds/Ler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you just have to decide: either you take the bloody train or you don't.<br/>Whatever you choose, learn to not regret it.<br/>Also, learn to accept when someone makes that choice for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is a land of promise

_"Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in the square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches."_

 Italo Calvino, _Invisible Cities_

  
  


 

 

He stands on the platform, and remembers why he hates public transport. No matter, what they say about train stations, airports, bus stops, no matter what they say about all the love that supposedly leaks out of every single one of the people there, he still hates it.

There are too many people. They skitter around, like huge worker ants, with their bags, with their restless children and pets, with their relatives, who are going to miss them so much, but could you just bloody go already so they could get back home and watch TV till their heads explode. There is noise and garbage and strangest of smells and questionable food.

Here, you can get lost. Here, you can be nobody.

 

Eames has to come. He promised.

Eames promises a lot of things, for him promises are a way to flirt with Fate herself. Eames can flirt with everything, even Death. For him, she is also a worthy lady, with a tasteful love for the absolute and black lingerie.

Arthur never thought himself to be an impressionable man, but that's what Eames does to people. He makes everyone believe in his promises and bluffs and charming winks and languid stokes against your skin in the dark of the night, behind closed shutters and drawn curtains, as he whispers into your ear, heavy and warm and _Darling_.

 

Eames will come and lead him away from here, to hot cities with endless sand that gets everywhere, in your eyes, mouth, shoes, underwear, much like Eames himself.

And Arthur will leave, even though the job in Italy spells a lot of cash, even though he is standing right in front of the bloody train, even though inside the train sits a girl that makes Arthur's heart skip a beat with her easy-going smiles, and defined looks, and he will never ever forgive himself for leaving her like that because now _Arthur_ promised, and he rarely does that.

 

Eames still isn't here.

Arthur sips his coffee, standing on the platform, PASIV in one hand, suitcase on the ground, and waits.

 

_"Never thought I'd say that, but your taste in coffee is atrocious."_

_Arthur turns around, to a pair of worn jeans, a faded leather jacket, a god-awful shirt sticking from under half-closed zipper, and a pair of bright blue eyes, with same casual amusement and frivolity. He lets out a breath he doesn't know he is holding, as something finally uncoils in the pit of his stomach._

_"You can never be on time, can you? The train leaves in five minutes."_

_"Don't you know, darling? It's a purpose of my existence to make you jittery." He picks up Arthur's suitcase and start towards the exit, self-confident, completely disconcerted if Arthur is actually following him - of course, he is, why the hell wouldn't he, because he is Eames, a very addictive entity, made of impossible colors and pure unadulterated sex, a bright character by nature._

_"We have a flight to Cairo in three hours," he announces, as the train takes off and, under Arthur's slightly longing look and a tentative squeeze to his heart that will never really go away, goes on it's journey south._

_"Rien," Eames starts in a rumbling baritone what is just another part of his charm. "Je ne regrette rien…"_

_Before Cairo, there is Eames, familiar and yet such a constantly reinvented variable, who presses him against the wall, insolent, demanding, shameless in what he wants, and Arthur gives, like a powerless little lovestruck girl, completely consumed by the glamour of everything that is the forger thrown over his eyes._

_It's not that he is gentle, it's just he is so good at this - there is a tiny question in the back of his mind (while Eames licks the length of his neck in one thick hot breathy stroke), why is he so good, was there someone that he was with like_ this _before Arthur, and if there was, then how many ~~and how many will be~~ (doesn't matter doesn't matter because he is here now, and Arthur is here too, ~~but Ariadne is on her way to Italy right now, alone~~ ) - and maybe Arthur falls in love with him a little right there. And maybe he really doesn't regret a thing._

_In Cairo, there is a completely different Eames, and Arthur is not sure about that one, sandals and shorts and tattoos on one deep tan everyone stares at._

_"All this has to go," he proclaims, throwing half of Arthur's clothes out of the hotel window. The ties go first._

_"But…" But, there is a finger on his lips, and all words are lost. He pulls out a pack of some unknown Egyptian cigarettes, Arthur doesn't really want to know what they are made off, they stink, but Eames tugs one out with his teeth and lights in with a cheap pink lighter. Then he takes a seat on a narrow windowsill, and puffs smoke into the hot dusty air of the street, and yes, it might be about a thousand degrees outside._

_"Believe me, they will be much more appreciated by the locals. You, on a camel, in a suit -  probably a sight to remember, but that would give you bad ideas."_

_"Oh, like what?" Arthur doesn't really know what to do except to join him. The ground underneath the window is spotless, like the waterfall of his shirts didn't just land there._

_"Like to shoot me in the face. I know there is a bloodthirsty killer somewhere underneath all those layers."_

_Arthur is just about to joke that that he can shoot him every day if he want. Even twice a day. But Eames continues._

_"Like starting to fill yourself with this ridiculous regret. I'm not a lovely young girl, and I'm almost certain I'll never be one. In reality, I mean. I can be in dreams, but it's not that interesting. Don't take me wrong, even I would make sweet tender love to her - wait, that didn't sound all that out of the ordinary…"_

_Eames, who mumbles and tries to count something on his fingers, while the ash of his cancer stick falls on the floor, is possibly something Arthur can coexist with. It's simpler than all the other ones, the museum of thousand mirrors, all of them Eames and all of them far too complicated. And there is more that Arthur won't even meet ever in his life_

_It takes about three years for him to get a grip on the idea what he doesn't really care._

_There are jobs, good ones, easy ones, and then the ones which do not work out. They change architects, each time the new one - for Arthur they are never good enough, never talented enough, and Eames sighs , and agrees to whatever all of them try to forward, but never asks if Arthur wants that particular one, the one he can't find a courage to talk to yet. They never talk about it._

_On the other hand, they never talk about a lot of things._

_From hotel, to hotel, to hotel, and they never stop, Eames never stops, tagging Arthur along, to meet new clients that should bring a lot of money, to new casinos where he spends the same bloody money, to the beds with always fresh sheets where they don't talk at all, and sometimes don't even fuck, just lie in silence, tangled legs and intertwined fingers, and no thoughts whatsoever._

_Arthur starts wearing jeans. T-shirts take time to get used to, but one day he starts wearing them too._

_Eames approves, it's so much easier to get him undressed now. Plus, he can mix in all his laundry with Arthur's, when he feels lazier than usual._

_And it's normal, like the thief's constant need to steal things for him, books, some weird useless tourist souvenirs, more t-shirts, like Eames' blunt quiet confession in the middle on the night in Prague, that he can 'go on like this forever', like Ariadne, who is apparently still in business, who doesn't even recognize them at first, but then smiles - there is this grip on his heart again - and takes them out to dinner, lovely, all grown-up, still beautiful. Eames murmurs something in her ear by the end of the evening, she is less then cheerful for a moment, but comes back and places a kiss on the forger's forehead - that is out of the ordinary, but so harmonic._

_It's all great, when they are in Buenos Aires, and Eames says he needs to buy cigarettes._

_He walks out of the door to the nearest department store. And doesn't come back._

 

_Half hour late, when Arthur is running through the street to the store that is what, five minutes away, an old woman points him to the dirty dark alcove with only a red lighting bug of tobacco marking the forger's presence._

_"What the hell is wrong with you?"Arthur says, or wants to say, before he sees a pool of something dark cooling around Eames' form, and the man propped against the wall raises his head to look at him._

_"Sorry, darling. I though about going home, but our friends from Fernando job shot me a bit too much."_

_He exhales, slowly, and the smoke Arthur  got used to these last few years comes out with a cough and some maroon ooze at the corner of his mouth. "It's quite unfortunate, I'm not very attractive with all these bleeding holes in my chest."_

_Arthur wants to scream, shout and ask why he didn't call, he could have dragged him to the hospital, on his own back if required, but he just leans against the wall, grabs the fingers, that are getting cold and are covered in blood, and lets a heavy weight of the other man's head fall on his shoulder._

_" And you know what's bad? I just bought a whole new pack." He talks, slow, comfortable, and finally looks his age. The hand, not really obeying him anymore, shoves the package into Arthur's chest. "Want one? Take them all. Somebody has to smoke them."_

_And they do, together, till the cold lips touch Arthur's neck and the white tube falls out of slack fingers._

 

_He walks silently back to the hotel, red smears on his shirt and a cigarette between his teeth. In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror, pale, with empty dark eyes, black scruff trying to make it's way on his chin, and he does look a little bit like Eames now._

_The cigarettes taste awful, but it's that one last flavor he won't be able to let go._

 

 

He stands on the platform.

It's empty now and he feels a little bit betrayed. Strangely, not for himself, but for all this luggage, a PASIV, a life they can have, could have had together, maybe not for long, maybe till the moment when Eames, finally bored to hell with all the finely-bred cockroaches inside Arthur's head, would have left to find somebody else, with thin legs and dark hair, and Arthur finally would have finished to serve his purpose as a stalling device.

Just like he was to Dom and a reflection of a broken mirror inside his head. Before Ariadne, with her stubbornness and straightforward free mind that is able to bend at unbelievable angles.

 

Somewhere in the corner of his eye a man in bright yellow blows the whistle.

 

_Arthur steps on the train._

_"I'm glad," she says as he enters the coach. The PASIV goes immediately under the seat. The luggage in the overhead compartment. He sits down across from her, and looks how the cup rattles on the saucer as the train takes off._

_"I don't know if you should be." It's an understatement. In a way, Arthur himself thinks that this amazingly lovely, unbelievably talented, witty, intelligent girl deserves so much more than an indecisive man who still has a thing for that other_ guy _. He probably just said that out loud, because she almost chokes on her tea, laughter spilling from her mouth._

_"Oh Arthur, Please. If you think that I have some kind of an illusion that you came here because of your undying love for me, you are terribly wrong. I can see business and not-interested when it is shoved into my face."_

_As he already said. Very straightforward. Very right. Ha, unlike Eames, the curliest thing about her is probably her hair. Her labyrinths go right after that._

_In everything else, there is no undetermined status, and not many problems.  After all, she is female, and pretty, and smart, and legal-age young, with a glint in her eye that says Challenge me, and I'm your Girl. And for Arthur, it's good enough. And she knows it._

_That is why, it's alright, when in the middle of the night, when he can't sleep, when the weight of The Alps is pushing solidly on him in a narrow tunnel the train passes through, crushing the remains of his self-respect and decency, he pops himself on the edge of her 'bed' and gently touches her face. She turns, sleepy, confused for a second or two,_ Arthur, what, _and then her eyes shine in the dark, she sits up, her arms wrapping around his shoulders._ Oh Arthur _, quietly, not as a lusty moan of a horny girlfriend, not a passionate sigh of a lover, just a comforting whisper of a partner, and this is a very different kind of happiness, not a crazy break-your-neck adventure with Eames, but a little world she creates for them within the confinements of the train coach, and after, in the hotel beds in Milano and Roma, on a ferry to Dubrovnik, in the car to Bar, on a flight to Moscow and so on._

_There are a few rules, of course._

_One. Business before everything else._

_Two. No children, they interfere with business._

_Three. No falling in love, because it produces kids, and they interfere with business._

_They shake on it, they nod, they drink, they kiss, they screw like rabbits on the white slightly damp sheets in St. Petersburg, while seagulls mock them through the opened window overlooking the Kronstadt._

_Seven years later, they finally meet Eames (no, Arthur is not running away from him, that notion is ridiculous), almost by accident, in San Francisco._

_It's actually Ariadne who bumps into him, distracted by a caffeine-free coffee burning her fingers even through a cardboard sleeve. He brushes against her, the cup falls on the ground, spilling, and she swears under her breath, raising her eyes to the source of her discontent and meeting the forger's face. Arthur doesn't know what surprises Eames more: meeting Ariadne in San Francisco, or the perfect round slope of her stomach his hand is pressed against. Probably the last, since he doesn't even talk for a minute, just caresses gently, like he never saw a pregnant woman before. The first words he says to her are a logical continuation._

_"Kiddo, you make one marvelous woman."_

_She blushes, and she is beautiful, and she shines in a way only pregnant women do. And then the hormones probably kick in,  because her smile dissolves, leaving only the smallest of wrinkles, and she looks straight at Arthur sitting at the table, then at Eames, her hand over his, and says: "I'm sorry."_

_Uncomfortable silence could have been the right way to describe this situation, except that there are people around, real men and women, talking and laughing, and a distant sound of an accordion coming from afar._

_Could have been, if Eames could ever do uncomfortable. He kisses her cheeks, soft skin_

_against his prickly chin, and guides her to Arthur's table, with a matter-of-factly "I do expect you to make me a godfather. British people make the best godfathers ever."_

_Like there was no platform. Like there was no train._

_Now here what rules were for, before Arthur broke every single one of them._

_He got so happily numb with everything. He got sloppy._

_Ariadne still designed levels, brilliant and intricate and complicated. Arthur remembered them perfectly. Unfortunately, the new forger, a drama graduate Arthur picked out himself (and yet he isn't Eames, nobody is Eames, but Arthur can't do this to neither of them), could not._

_He had to hide for a week. It wasn't that high-level of a job anyway. Just a week away and he'll be back._

_On Friday, she wrote: I think I'm going into labor._

_On Saturday, the hospital called him: Congratulations, it's a girl._

_And: Our Condolences._

_there was something about bleeding, something about her small stature, something about traffic, caesarean section, hemorrhaging, something that doesn't even make sense to him but should, he knows all these words, he knowsheknowsheknowsAriAriAriAriAriAAAAAAAAAAAA_

No falling in love, Arthur _, says old man Cobb, while his daughter plays in the living room._

It's a deadly thing in this business, _he says, while they sit on his porch, and Arthur rocks a small cooing bundle in his arms. His cooing bundle._

But sometimes, you don't really have a choice.

 

Sometimes you don't have a choice, so Arthur walk down the hallway of the car and opens the door.

Ariadne, sweet and smiley and fresh like a bouquet of red carnations on the table, looks up at him from her book.

"I was worried you decided not to go," she notes, sipping her tea.

"I didn't really have a choice," he answers. The cup rattles on the saucer."You know, Ari, I just thought, this is not supposed to mean anything."

"What exactly?"

"My decision to go. The thing with Eames. The thing with you. Sentiments and feelings are bad in this line of work."

"This sounds like an old wife's tale," says Eames, slipping through the door of the compartment, and placing himself next to Ariadne. His arm goes around her shoulders, like he is just in time, like the two of them are of the same kind. Like they both belong here.

He smiles with all his conspicuous flirtatious delight to Arthur's dumbfolded muteness, nuzzling Ari's temple tenderly.

"Sweetheart, don't you think our dear Arthur is full of bullshit? The ones that will go loony from dreamwork are the ones who want to, love or no love. I, for one, am not too interested in that prospect."

She laughs, bells in the wind, true to herself. She always found Eames' ventures and twists of tongue quite amusing even if Arthur thought they were... unorthodox, to say the least.

"What are you doing here, Eames?"

There is this grin again, lazy, dangerous, like the moments before the turn of the last card, the final roll of dice, the standstill of the roulette.

"Just shuffling myself a hand, darling. Nothing more." His arm presses Ariadne closer to his chest, hand tilting her chin up and towards him. "Now, for a final check."

He presses his mouth to hers, his lips, sturdy and full, to her, soft and smooth, two tastes that Arthur knows perfectly well, mixing, blending, interloping. There is barely no surprise from her, and there is no delay. She scratches under his jaw - how does she even know, that move and what it does to Eames - and he elicits a sound that makes Arthur immediately jealous. He isn't sure of who exactly.

"Well, well, Thumbelina," Eames pulls away, and he has that face that Arthur thought was reserved only for him. "I had a feeling you were a chip of the old block, but this is quite a surprise. Any, ah, constructive negative feedback?"

She chews on her lower lip, pondering. Like it's a normal thing, like Eames didn't just give her one of patented 'mindblowers' or whatever he calls them. Like this isn't turning into something very very dangerous very very fast.

"Nope, none. But I think Arthur has something to say."

Eames scrawls, his arm letting go. The sole purpose of this move is to allow himself to lie down with his head on Ariadne's lap.

"Love, as you will learn quite soon, Arthur always has something to say. But just because he is good in bed, it doesn't mean he is fun at parties." The forger's head turns, with playfulness and cockiness and love, Ari's fingers in his hair. "But anyways, Darling, where exactly are we going now?"

All Arthur can answer to his own surprise, over a growing disbelieving smile, is: "Possibly, to Hell."

And while Eames starts to rumble that the macabre humor is an acquired taste, and Ariadne jokes about the two of them starting their own stand-up act, Weird and Weirder, with her as their manager (but wait, that would make her the weirdest, wouldn't it?), Arthur thinks that there was never really a choice.

 

Some decisions just make themselves.

 

**Fin**


End file.
